


not ready to make nice

by airnomadenthusiast



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Maiko, Found Family, Gen, M/M, Past jetko, background Sukka - Freeform, background kataang, background metalbee
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27393766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airnomadenthusiast/pseuds/airnomadenthusiast
Summary: Days after Jet was supposed to die, he woke up. Alive. Injured, alone, and helpless. But alive. Now, all he had to do was stay that way.
Relationships: Freedom Fighters - Relationship, Hama & Jet (Avatar), Haru/Jet (Avatar), Jet & The Gaang (Avatar)
Comments: 48
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have been talking about writing this for SUCH A LONG TIME and it is finally here, goodness gracious. Warnings for pretty frank discussion of injury and some graphic diescription. thank you so much, as always, to @GildedFlowers for betaing!

When Jet woke up, Smellerbee and Longshot were gone. 

He was sitting in a bed, too soft for his liking, and his left arm was bandaged up. There was the faint taste of blood in his mouth, and he swallowed it down. His head hurt like nothing he’d ever felt before, and in a flash, he remembered a story his mother used to tell him, an old tale of a boy and a Spirit. Everybody thought the boy was dead, that the Spirit had eaten him alive, but the boy was quick, street smart (like you, his mother said, a sly smile on her face) and he bested the Spirit with nothing but his wits. Everybody left him for dead, but he wasn’t. Everybody thought the Spirit had eaten him, but he’d eaten the Spirit instead. 

Jet wouldn’t be surprised if, when his head stopped killing him, when his shoulder stopped aching, he remembered that he had tussled with a Spirit. The room smelled like death, save for the flowers hastily shoved into a vase in the corner. Maybe he was like that boy. Almost dead, and yet somehow, alive. 

But Smellerbee and Longshot were gone.   
When Jet tried to sit up, a shooting pain in his arm sent him careening back down to the bed. He winced, and after the worst of the pain had passed, he tried getting back up again. Again, the pain, the flying, and this time more pain when his back hit the bedframe a little too hard. He’d gotten some pretty bad scrapes in his day, but the not being able to move was a first for him. His damn shoulder. The bandages looked similar to when the Duke (that betraying, lying—) had busted his arm up and Pipsqueak (that no-good—Jet had taken him _in_ , Jet was the reason he was _anybody_ ), the medic of the group, had said after a moment that it was fractured and dislocated. Jet’s bandages were messier than the Duke’s had been. Had Smellerbee patched him up? This mess looked like her handiwork. 

Where was she? 

Jet closed his eyes, imagining himself moving and the pain magically going away, roaming the streets in search of the Freedom Fi—in search of his friends. It was a good dream. He let himself indulge in it, let himself feel the sights and sounds of the Lower Ring, let himself imagine his feet gliding over the muddy streets, sidestepping people going in the other direction in narrow thoroughfares. And at the end of a long, crooked Ba Sing Se road, there they would be: Smellerbee and Longshot. Waiting for him. 

And then he opened his eyes. _Welcome back to the real world._ He would sit and wait for them. He could trust them. They would always come back for him. 

________________

Three days later, Jet isn’t so sure. 

Well, he is sure that Smellerbee and Longshot wouldn’t intentionally abandon him. But after his encounter with the Dai Li, he’s not certain that something didn’t happen to them. He knows that they’re capable, that they can handle themselves. But he thought he could handle himself too. 

He’s been able to get up to use the chamber pot a couple of times, and to change out of his dirty clothes into new ones. He’s not sure the new ones are any cleaner than the old ones, considering Longshot’s spotty track record on laundry, but they feel cleaner to him. He still can’t use his right arm, but he’s left handed, so it’s okay. He’s scared up a little food from his neighbors, who take pity on him when he says a couple of those new, lowlife refugee boys attacked him. He remembers the days when his pride would have kept him from this, when he would have rather died than entertain bigoted lowlifes like this, but those days were over. He had one job: survive until Smellerbee and Longshot got back. 

And survive he did. The next day, when they didn’t return, he got to work fashioning himself some crutches to get around better. They weren’t pretty—Smellerbee was the carver of the Freedom Fighters, not him, and she was an artist about it too—but they worked, sometimes, and that was what mattered. The day after that, he was able to steal some fruit from the market without anybody noticing him. Well, somebody did notice him, but he acted helpless and pathetic and they left him alone. He snorted. Maybe he could play the part, but he _wasn’t_ pathetic. He wasn’t. 

On the eighth morning, Jet woke up and yelled out for Smellerbee and Longshot. When nobody replied, he took a deep breath, and told himself, “They’re not coming back. Not unless you get them back. Okay?” 

On the ninth morning, he woke up, tore his sling and bandages off, and made himself some tea. His right arm and shoulder were shot through with pain, but he ignored it. Pain was temporary. If acknowledging it was going to keep him from finding Smellerbee and Longshot, he didn’t want it. 

He had a vague memory of what had happened to him down in the catacombs, how he’d helped the Avatar, how Smellerbee and Longshot had promised to take care of him. That was a sweet thought, but he took care of himself. Clearly. 

He’d have to figure out the layout of the catacombs. And then he’d probably have to fight off more Dai Li. And if what happened to him was any indication, he’d have to snap them out of whatever brainwashing they’d put him under. And of course, that was all assuming that they were still alive. 

They were alive, though. He knew it. He’d taught them how to survive, and he knew they would. 

First, he’d have to nick a layout of all the prison systems in this city. He knew it had to be more than just where he’d been held, and any of the other areas could be where they were keeping Smellerbee and Longshot. He didn’t know how he’d figure out where they were being held—he didn’t know how he’d get them out—he didn’t know where they would go when he got them out—

He took a deep breath. Okay. There were a lot of things he didn’t know. That was okay. He hadn’t known a damn thing growing up, just the scent of smoke in the air and how to run. And he still knew those things, only now he knew how to fight too. That was all you really needed, for a full life, for a life where you could protect yourself and the people you loved. Where the danger was coming from, how to protect yourself from it, and how to get _away._

He could still do that. He could get them away. He could get them _all_ away. The plan had to come after the belief. Because it wasn’t a wish, a desire to save Smellerbee and Longshot for him. It was a need. And things Jet needed, Jet got.

_____________________

There were a lot of ways to get help in Ba Sing Se, if one only knew where to look. Over the next few weeks, Jet got pretty good at finding the kids with information and getting them to spill. It wasn’t so different from taking care of the gang back in the forest. The kids were hungry, so he fed them. The kids were thirsty, so he gave them water to drink. The kids were lonely, so he talked to them, and when he mentioned that he was lonely too, and that he’d do anything to save his friends, the kids would reappear a couple days later, with a piece of a map or a scrap of information. And he’d pocket it, smile, and say thank you. 

For the first time since his injury, he thought of Katara. What would she call this? Manipulation, probably. Taking advantage of poor kids who didn’t know any better than to listen to him. But orphans did know better. Orphans always knew better. And orphans knew to run when they saw someone who wanted to take advantage of them, and they knew when they saw one of their own, someone who’d seen the things they’d seen. Some of the kids disappeared after getting their food and water from Jet, and that was fine to him. They needed it more than he did. The ones who did help him, he let them know how grateful he was, and they smiled, nodded, and found their way back into the shadows. 

Every day as he walked the streets, he passed by a blacksmith’s shop. He’d lost his hook swords some time between nearly dying and coming back to life again, and he’d stopped in the shop a couple times, looking to see if they had anything. It was all junk, which he should have expected, given that it was the Lower Ring and none of them had the funds to get anything better than junk. 

_How’d you get your swords, Jet?_

_He smiled down at her, her chubby cheeks and her big, curious eyes. One thing was certain: he was going to love little Smellerbee forever._

_Same way I get everything else. I stole them._

Nothing in the blacksmith’s shop was worth stealing. And when he looked at the owner, a short woman stooped over even further by the work and grime, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The Jet of the past, the Jet Katara had met, wouldn’t have given it a second thought. These were the same people who’d refused to take him in, the same people who would rather throw their food in the garbage than give a sliver of it to somebody who really needed it. But he couldn’t keep letting his bitterness control him. He couldn’t let the people who’d tried to tell him that the world was cruel make it that way. 

What he could do was try to sneak into the Upper Ring. It was dangerous, and difficult, no doubt about it, but he couldn’t very well step into a highly secured prison without a weapon, and no blacksmith in the Upper Ring would be as stooped over as that woman was. They weren’t even making weapons to help in the war effort, because no one in the Upper Ring was helping in the war effort. It was possible that because no one in the Upper Ring was helping in the war effort, the swords would be little more than decorative, but Jet didn’t really have much of a choice. 

He spent long nights putting together his map of the underbelly of Ba Sing Se, a labyrinth of interconnected passageways and caverns, all holding countless amounts of people. Jet’s heart twisted at the idea of saving Smellerbee and Longshot and leaving everyone else behind, but he shoved the thought down. Something he’d learned early on: you can’t save everybody. It’s better to do a little bit of good than to just sit and think about all the good you could be doing. And saving Smellerbee and Longshot was good. Saving Smellerbee and Longshot was the greatest good that he could do right now. 

For a moment, before he remembered to be bitter, before he remembered to be angry, he wished for Pipsqueak and the Duke. He hadn’t done a mission on his own since he was eight, and until recently, he and Pipsqueak and the Duke were inseparable. 

He knew why. He accepted that. But it still stung, hard and raw in his chest, opening him up. 

He stared at his map again. One of the kids, a little boy with warm brown skin and curly hair, had told him that kids were mostly held in the same place, separate from the adults. Whispers among the women at the fruit stands told him that this was on the left side, far from the Lower Ring. 

So, it was decided. He would use his map of the catacombs to sneak into the Upper Ring, grab a weapon of some kind from a rich blacksmith, and bring that weapon back with him into the catacombs when he freed Smellerbee and Longshot. 

How he’d avoid the Dai Li? How he’d keep from almost getting killed again? How he’d do this without any help? 

He didn’t know.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jet breaks into prison. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big thanks to @GildedFlowers for betaing, I love you! also thanks to the Jetru server for...being yourselves <3 I love y'all

When the sun set over the wall, Jet set out. 

The entrance into the catacombs wasn’t too far from where he lived, but he’d have to move fast. Rumors around the neighborhood were that landlords were coming to collect rent in the morning, and he wanted to erase any trace of his existence in this apartment before they came. One way or another, this would be the end of his stay in Ba Sing Se. 

The entrance, unfortunately, was in a grate full of sewage and garbage. Jet grimaced, rolled up his sleeves, crouched down, and popped the top of the grate off, before hopping in. There was a shooting pain in his shoulder, but he shoved it down. This was too important to let a silly little thing like pain get in his way. He’d been in pain before. He’d gone through dirt before. He’d gone through it all. 

_Everybody thought the Spirit had eaten him, but he’d eaten the Spirit instead._

He leaned against the wall for a few moments and breathed. Smellerbee had tried to get him into a breath work practice when they’d first moved to the city. When she’d tried it, he’d been too angry, too caught up in what he thought he saw—what he _knew_ he saw. Back then, he was still fighting. 

The fight was over. This time, it was time to run. 

It was a long walk from the Lower Ring to the Upper Ring, and it was made even longer by Jet hiding every time he heard the slightest sound. Most of the time it was just rats, but he knew now how quiet the Dai Li were, how they would take him and gobble him up in a moment if he made the slightest mistake. Better to be safe than sorry. 

When he finally emerged from the catacombs, grimy and exhausted, every part of his body aching, he felt like collapsing. But he knew he couldn’t. Right now, the streets were quiet, but if anybody saw him, covered in garbage and wearing Fire Nation clothing, the Dai Li would take him. He couldn’t go through that again. 

He looked around him until he saw a fountain, peaceful and pretty, made up of shining white marble. It showed the first Earth King, Liang I, in long robes and a glittering crown, looking sternly over the populace, as if he was still ruling from the grave. 

Jet took some of the water from the fountain and rubbed it on his face and hands before wiping them with his sleeve. Then, he looked at the statue again. 

It was risky, and it wouldn’t do him any good, but he couldn’t resist. 

He spat on it, muttered “fuck you,” and turned in the direction of the Upper Ring blacksmith. 

More walking. More walking. The streets of the Upper Ring, unlike the streets of the Lower Rings, were wide, spacious, and clean, made of some beautiful white brick. As he walked, he saw the recently abandoned house where the Avatar and his friends had been staying. A sound escaped his mouth, almost like a laugh, short and bitter. What did he expect of them? They weren’t friends, they didn’t care about him. They were off to save the world, and it didn’t matter if the world needed saving from more than just the Fire Nation. Whether or not Jet lived didn’t matter to them. 

He shook his head, snapping himself out of his funk. So what? He was trying to save the people who did care whether he lived or died. Those were the people who mattered. Fuck the world, and fuck the Avatar. He had Smellerbee and Longshot. Or he would. Soon. 

He stood in front of the blacksmith’s workshop. It was large, and if he peeked in the windows he could see high ceilings, shelves full with various weapons. 

He could break the glass, but that would leave a trace, and he didn’t want anyone to be able to trace him back to this shop, or to this city, or to anywhere really. He wanted to disappear. 

He looked up, and sighed, a grin spreading across his face. “Rich people,” he muttered appreciatively, looking at the open window on the second floor. He had to hand it to them, they made everything a hell of a lot easier. 

Climbing a storefront wasn’t exactly as easy as clambering up a tree, especially with the way his body pained and ached, but he figured he’d never get better if he didn’t at least try to do the things he’d used to do. He was almost at the window when his right hand snagged on a sharp piece of unsanded wood, cutting his palm open. He hissed in pain, one arm hanging from the open windowsill, his feet starting to slip. His hands were sweating, his eyes were watering, and for once, the pain threatened to catch up with him. _Don’t look down, Jet. Don’t look down._

He placed his bleeding hand on the windowsill and found more solid footholds, and pulled himself into the window, falling inside right onto his recently dislocated shoulder. Hissing in pain, he looked around. The room was full of rags and smelled like bleach, and it was tiny and dark. He sensed a rat scurry near his head, and gulped. 

Slowly, he crept to the door handle and pulled himself up again, dusting himself off and walking through the door, only to find an old man on the other side, mop in hand. 

The old man’s eyes grew wide, and Jet panicked. “Sir, please,” he whispered. “I’m a friend. I promise.” 

The man shook his head. “I’ve never seen you around before.” 

Jet smiled, ignoring the shooting pain in his arm. “Who says strangers can’t become friends, huh? What’s your name?” 

“Chen,” the man said, his voice trembling. “Please, I have a family—” 

“I’m not going to hurt you, Chen,” Jet said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Do you live around here? You look like you live around here.” 

A small smile passed over Chen’s face. It was quick, but Jet noticed. “I just clean up here,” he said. “I live in the Lower Ring.”

“Really? We have so much in common, you know that? I live in the Lower Ring too. Near where that tea shop is, you know that place?” 

Chen nodded. “My granddaughter took me there. Said it had gotten really good all of a sudden. But then this young man with a horrible scar started a fight with—” 

His eyes widened in recognition. Jet kept smiling, but he knew that things were about to get a whole lot worse, and quickly. 

“Listen, Chen, the two of us? We’ve got to stick together. I mean, a single jewel off of one of these swords could pay two months’ rent—” 

“So that’s why you came here? To steal?” Chen leveled his mop at Jet’s face. “I have half a mind to call the police! They know what to do with hoodlums like you!” 

And then, Jet got an idea. “Shouldn’t you have called the police already? I mean, I’m breaking and entering. You already have more than enough evidence to get me locked away for good, don’t you?” 

Chen faltered. “I—I suppose I do.” 

Jet raised an eyebrow. “So aren’t you going to do it?” 

The old man’s eyes betrayed something like guilt, and Jet knew he had him. “They took my son,” he muttered. “Twenty years ago. I haven’t seen him since.” He lowered his mop. “You may be trouble, but another young man in the catacombs isn’t going to fix anything.” 

Jet grinned. “You are absolutely right, Chen. Thank you for your kindness. Now—” 

“Don’t you dare ask me for anything else.” Chen narrowed his eyes, glaring at Jet. “I will give you five minutes. After that, I’m calling the owners. Are we clear?” 

Jet nodded. “Crystal.” 

Chen shook his head at him. “You know, it’s bad apples like you who are dragging the neighborhood down.” 

“Trust me, you’re never going to see me again after tonight.” 

“Spirits, I hope not. Get lost.” 

Jet ran, scurrying down the stairs to the showroom, where ornately decorated swords lined the aisles. He scanned the room for anything that even slightly resembled his old hook swords, but there was nothing. He guessed they were more of a Fire Nation tradition, and seeing how hellbent this town was on forgetting that the Fire Nation existed, Jet was more than willing to bet the blacksmith wasn’t learning how to make their weapons. He scowled. He’d learned how to fight on those swords, and he wasn’t practiced with anything else, but anything else was his only option at the moment. 

“Three minutes!” Chen yelled. Jet cursed and grabbed the closest thing he could find, an axe with a curved blade and a green handle. 

“Thank you sir!” Jet yelled, sprinting out the door and heading back the way he came. The axe was heavy and unfamiliar in his hand, and he hoped against hope that it would be enough. 

_Smellerbee, Longshot, I’m coming for you._

There was just one problem: he had no idea where Smellerbee and Longshot were being held. 

That wasn’t entirely true. He knew they were being held underneath the Upper Ring. That’s why he was here to begin with. But he didn’t know exactly where. The Upper Ring was huge, sprawling with mansions and shops and rich people talking about the weather. And the underbelly was sprawling too, with kids cramped together in small cells, their eyes dazed and confused, their noses bleeding, their faces covered in dirt. 

Jet wanted to break down in tears. He was there. He had been like this, his eyes glazed over, his mouth hanging agog, waiting for someone to save him. He’d been lucky that he had someone to save him. Clearly, these kids didn’t. 

He couldn’t be that person. It would be a miracle if he made it out of here with Smellerbee and Longshot, let alone breaking out everybody in the catacombs. He was just one kid, and this was a huge system, caverns underneath every corner of the city, walls high as the eye could see. And if they made it out, they’d be free to do what? Fight a war? Die in the streets of a city that didn’t care if they lived or died? Not everyone had an Avatar to protect them from the evils of the world. 

He had to stay focused, much as it turned his stomach to leave these kids behind. Better to live having helped somebody than die trying to save everybody, and saving nobody instead. 

He roamed the catacombs for what felt like hours, passing by the kids, some of them looking eight or nine years old, all of them completely terrified. He smiled at every kid he passed, and kept moving. 

He hid every time he thought he heard a Dai Li agent approaching, but it was harder now than it had been walking the mostly empty passageways from the Lower to the Upper Ring. The kids made noise, the rats made noise, the people bustling above in the Upper Ring, waking up to a new dawn and a missing axe, made noise. And the Dai Li were silent. 

“Hey!” somebody yelled behind him. Jet turned around, expecting to see a kid yelling at him, maybe Smellerbee or Longshot, but it wasn’t either of them. A man with a conical hat and a long green robe stood on the other side of the passageway, drawing his sword. “You aren’t supposed to be down here!” 

Jet didn’t think he was going to be able to talk himself out of this one. He bolted, but when he looked in front of him there was another agent waiting for him. He skidded to a stop and started swinging his axe around, but the agent had him on the floor in three deft moves, groaning in pain. The axe clattered on the floor, out of reach, and the agent’s knee was on his chest in a second. 

“Where did you come from?” the agent huffed, pressing his knee further on Jet’s chest. 

Jet panted. “Get… off… me!” 

The agent’s eyes widened, recognition in his eyes. He didn’t get off, but he eased the pressure on Jet’s chest, leaving him able to breathe but still pinned on the floor. “You’re with the Avatar, aren’t you? I saw you in here with him last time.” 

_Spirits._ “I’m not with the Avatar.” 

“Stop lying!” The pressure was back, closing in on Jet’s lungs, making his throat clam up. “Where is he? Take me to him!” 

“I don’t know where the Avatar is!” Jet gasped, wriggling underneath the agent. “Please, please, believe me. I don’t know where he is.” 

“Why would you come down here alone? You had to know we were looking for you.” The agent smirked. He knew exactly how much his knee was digging into Jet’s chest. Jet could tell. “Are you just that stupid?” 

Something in the guy’s face changed, and he smiled wider. “Wait, you are, aren’t you? You’re not lying at all.” He pushed, and the ceiling cracked over Jet’s head, a pile of rock and rubble ready to fall on him in a second. 

And then, out of nowhere, Jet saw the way out. 

“Wait!” 

The agent looked down at him with mild interest. “What? You want last rites? You should have thought of that earlier.” 

“I have information. About where the Avatar is. And if you kill me, you’ll never find out what it was.” 

The agent narrowed his eyes. “How do I know you aren’t lying to me?” 

Jet smiled. “You don’t. But I can give you my word.” 

He scoffed. “What’s a thug’s word worth to me?” 

“I’ll swear it on Kyoshi’s honor.” 

The agent laughed. “You’re Earth Kingdom?” 

Jet grimaced. One day, he was going to get new clothes, better clothes, and people would recognize him for who he actually was instead of who he had to pretend to be. “Yeah, I’m Earth Kingdom.” 

The agent took his knee off of Jet’s chest. “You know swearing on Kyoshi’s honor is serious, right?” 

“That’s exactly why I said I would do it. So you’d believe it.” 

The agent huffed. “You got guts, kid. Go ahead, swear.” 

“On my honor and Kyoshi’s, long may she reign, I will tell you the information that I have about the Avatar. And in return, you’ll let me go.” 

The agent rolled his eyes. “Whatever, kid.” 

“Swear it. Or you’re not getting anything from me.” 

The agent sighed. “All right.” He closed his eyes. “On my honor and Kyoshi’s, long may she reign, I will let this kid go _if_ and only if he delivers valuable information about the Avatar’s whereabouts.” 

“That’s more like it.” 

“Start talking.” 

Jet adjusted himself so that his newly acquired axe was in reach. “The Avatar and his friends are planning to invade Caldera City on Day of Black Sun. They’re sailing through the Fire Nation, preparing for the invasion, gathering their allies, you know the drill.” 

The agent shook his head. “We already knew that. I hope for your sake you have more information.” 

Jet smirked. “Guess it’s my lucky day then.” In one fluid motion, he grabbed the axe and swung it at the agent’s head, and ran. 

The passageway was crumbling behind him, and he hoped he was fast enough to carry himself out of the wreckage, but his arm ached with the bloodstained axe still in his hand. He wanted to hold onto it—he’d worked hard for that thing, awful as it was—but his arm started to burn, and he let it clatter to the ground and fall into the wreckage behind him. It had served its purpose. 

He hadn’t gotten very far when the passageway stopped crumbling, and he was out of the way. Any Earthbender could move the stone that had fallen in a second, Jet was certain of it. It would only be a matter of time before he was found out and taken away, unless he left now. 

And luck wasn’t on his side either. But then again, was it ever? 

He didn’t stop to think about it. It was time to get out of Ba Sing Se. It hadn’t done a thing for him yet. 

___________________________

He approached the outer wall of the city. The big one. The hole from when the Fire Nation princess and her allies had invaded and nearly taken the city by drill was still there. He and Longshot had checked it out, back when they’d first gotten to the city. Jet was convinced that people were still out to get them, that they weren’t going to have a moment to live in peace, so Longshot had led him to this outer wall to show him that there wasn’t any proof of that, but lo and behold, there was. There was that drill. 

But then Jet had looked back at Longshot’s face. People said that Longshot was hard to read, that trying to figure out what he was trying to say when he didn’t talk like they did was too difficult, but not for Jet. They’d known each other since they were kids. He knew the difference between sadness and worry, anger and concern. He knew how to recognize all those things at once. 

Longshot had touched his hand to the hole the drill left, and shook his head. Jet knew what that meant too. Don’t come back here. It’s not worth it. 

But he’d come back. He’d come back so many times. In the middle of the night, in the wee hours of the morning, whenever he thought Longshot or Smellerbee wouldn’t notice. He was quiet about it, and except for Li and Mushi (he was right about that, he _knew_ he was) he hadn’t made any noise about the Fire Nation. They were done with that life. Jet meant it when he said that. They were done running. 

He touched that hole one last time, and walked through it, Ba Sing Se behind him. Life had other things in store for him, he supposed. Because all he’d done since he got to that town was run. He’d probably keep running for the rest of his life. 

However much longer he had left.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jet leaves Ba Sing Se, not sure if he's better or worse off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter goes out to my friend List @thelistlesswriter! Happy belated birthday, I hope you had an awesome day! (also if you haven't read List's fics literally what are you doing they're so good)
> 
> also warnings on this chapter for discussions of death, injury, and body horror.

It was a long walk from Ba Sing Se to… anywhere, really. It was the only major city around for miles, and when the war started it had absorbed every little village inside its walls. The only thing Jet saw when he left the city was a zoo, which he’d visited. The zookeeper looked a little miffed when Jet asked why he was keeping the animals in cages, but then he’d explained that this way, he could feed them and make sure they stayed healthy. He actually cared about the animals in this zoo, he really did. Jet could see it all over his face. So he left him alone, and went on his way (but not before the zookeeper saw how gaunt Jet’s face looked and offered him some spare provisions. Jet thought he was going to offer him whatever he fed to the spider-pigs, but apparently the zookeeper had some human food on him too. He offered to pay, but the zookeeper refused, which was all fine and good with Jet, considering he didn’t have any money anyway.) 

Every day, Jet kept walking, not sure what direction he was going, just knowing that it was away from Ba Sing Se. Away from Smellerbee and Longshot. His gut clenched at that, but it was the only way. They would rather that he was safe than that he stayed with them. Besides, he had a curse on him now. Any day, Kyoshi’s spirit would punish him for using her name in bad faith. He swore on her honor, and he broke his promise. Someday soon, she would punish him for that. 

(At least, that’s what his mother would think. Jet didn’t quite understand how Kyoshi’s spirit could punish him for not keeping his promise, but his mother had insisted that he never swear like that, ever. Up until a few days ago, he had kept that promise.) 

But he didn’t really have time to dwell on that. There were the daily questions of food, water, shelter. Who he could trust and who he couldn’t. How far he could possibly get from Ba Sing Se. Wrestling with the nightmares, waking up from them, and shunting them to the side. Moving forward, walking, walking, walking. 

As he kept going, the styles of clothes changed. People started getting a lot fussier about the way they crossed their collars, and he started seeing a lot more red and gold in people’s attire. The way the signs were written changed, and after a couple days of noticing but not really paying attention, Jet got it. He was in the Fire Nation. 

Where exactly, he didn’t know, but he supposed it was for the best. The Dai Li wouldn’t try to find him here. He blended in a lot better. People looked at him and assumed that he was one of them (though they still steered clear.) And yes, there was a time where Jet wouldn’t be caught dead here, but he supposed he was dead in a way already. It was only a matter of time before death caught up with him. It had nearly gotten its claws around his neck once before, and soon, it would come by and finish the job. 

He sat on the ground in the middle of town and pulled out his last two copper pieces, looking up and down the thoroughfare for what that could get him. Maybe some water. Maybe some rotted fruit. A bit of rice. Certainly not any meat, or anything that would actually fill his stomach. 

His stomach grumbled. Damn it. 

“Excuse me,” a woman said, looking at him with a concerned expression. “Are you lost?” She was tall, and her ramrod straight posture made her seem even taller. Her hair was in an elaborate updo styled with red and white flowers, and her mouth was pursed in a thin line, matching the steeliness of her gaze.

He sighed. “No.” 

“Do you want something to eat? Maybe a place to stay? You look like you haven’t eaten properly in weeks.” 

He scowled. She was right of course, but did that make it her business? “I’m all right, ma’am, thank you.” 

“Your pride won’t feed you, boy.” Her eyes flashed, and something in his stomach churned. Come on, I have an inn. You can stay.” 

There was something in him that wanted to take her up on her offer, to follow her to her inn and ask her for tempura and maybe some mochi, sleep in a bed, eat at a table. But there was something off about her that he couldn’t quite explain. Maybe this was Kyoshi’s curse—lure him in with the promise of being able to rest, and kill him when he wasn’t looking. 

But then again, wouldn’t that be nice? To have one last nice meal? 

His stomach grumbled again. The decision was made. 

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go with you.” 

The woman smiled. “Excellent. You know, we really can’t have people just laying about. You never know who people are in this town.” She raised her eyebrows approvingly. “You may call me Fumiko.” 

She looked at him expectantly, and Jet sighed. He hadn’t prepared for a situation where someone would want to know his name, and even if he was grateful for the fact that these people thought he was one of them, there was no way he was giving them his real name. “Li,” he said quietly. “My name is Li.” 

He thought, briefly, of the boy he’d left behind. Spirits knew what had happened to him. And at any rate, it didn’t matter. Li was a Firebender. He’d be fine. He’d come out on the other side of this war when the Fire Nation won, and Jet wouldn’t.

Fumiko smiled. “Li is a wonderful name. A good, strong name. Are you a bender? I hear the army’s recruiting. They might be able to help you.” 

Jet scoffed on instinct, because he would die before he joined the Fire Nation army. But then Fumiko looked at him with a stern expression, and he remembered that Li would probably gladly take up the offer. “I’ll think about it,” he said quickly. “It sounds like a fantastic opportunity.” 

“It is,” Fumiko said, her mouth pursed in a thin line. “The army is bringing glory and salvation to the rest of the world. You should be so lucky as to be a part of it. The rest of the world is cruel and barbaric and we’re giving them a chance to save themselves.” 

Maybe Kyoshi’s curse had already taken hold. Maybe he was dead and his eternal punishment was to listen to Fumiko tell him that he wasn’t civilized. 

They continued on to her inn, and he worked really hard to keep his mouth shut as Fumiko went on and on about the glory of the Firelord and the way other nations were only hurting themselves by resisting him. When they got to the inn, she made him a plate of tempura shrimp sushi, which he dug into greedily as she continued on her rant. 

“The woman who owned this inn before me—oh, Agni! Horrible, horrible woman. She pretended she was one of us, but really, she was using some barbaric blood ritual to imprison the people in the village. Can you imagine?” 

Jet’s ears perked up at that. “What kind of blood ritual?” 

Fumiko scowled. “Some sort of Waterbending nonsense, I don’t pretend to know. All I know is she took my husband. Nearly killed him.” 

If Fumiko’s husband was anything like her, killing him would be mercy. “What happened to her?” 

Fumiko smiled at him warmly. “Oh, don’t you worry, pet, a few of our own captured her. She’s in the local jail just a little ways away from here, awaiting her sentence. I imagine it will be a public execution.” Her face filled with glee at the thought. 

Jet sipped at the tea she’d given him. The woman was still alive, and now he knew exactly where she was. Maybe he could do something about it. A small town Fire Nation jail had to be easier to break into than the catacombs of Ba Sing Se. Death might be catching up to him, but maybe he could do something useful before it caught him in its clutches again. 

“Could I get to my room?” he asked, playing into her vision of him as a meek little boy. “I’m feeling tired.” 

She frowned. “It’s barely mid-afternoon.” 

He yawned, loudly. “I suppose it’s the weeks that went by where I didn’t have food or a warm bed. Thank you so much for your kindness. I probably would have died in the streets if it weren’t for you.” 

He flashed her a wide, bright smile, and she melted. Perfect. 

“Oh, of course, you poor thing, I’ll take you right now.” She cleared his plates and scurried quickly up the stairs. “Here’s your room. Please, make yourself feel at home.” 

Jet smiled and bowed a little in her direction. “Thank you.” 

She smiled at him and closed the door. As soon as he heard her footsteps walking away from his room, he started looking around for anything that could possibly be used as a weapon. He found a cabinet and forced it open, only to find a veritable army of puppets. 

“What is wrong with this woman,” he muttered. But at the back of the cabinet, behind all the dust and puppets, something was gleaming. He reached for it, and found a knife about the length of his forearm, made of bone. He turned it over in his hands, and saw the inscription.  _ With love.  _

Weird inscription for a knife, but it didn’t matter. He smiled.  _ Jackpot.  _

It wasn’t at all similar to the knives that Smellerbee used, whose blades were small, made of metal, and designed to be hidden on the inside of a Fire Nation woman’s robes. But he knew he could figure out how to use it, and quietly, before he snuck out tonight. 

He had to. It was his only choice. 

_________________________

It was a long time before Fumiko went to bed. Every time she hadn’t made noise for a while and he was convinced that she had finally,  _ finally _ gone to sleep, he would hear her bustling around again, washing dishes or cleaning the kitchen. He was convinced that she never slept, that she didn’t need to. 

And he did. Every few minutes now, he was stifling a yawn. There was a full moon out tonight, and the stars twinkled outside his window. Even with purpose thrumming through his veins, he still remembered the little tricks Sneers taught him to help him sleep.  _ Count the stars until you can’t count anymore, and then you’ll be dreaming.  _

He tried to remember the stories that Sneers would tell him about constellations, but he couldn’t. Constellations themselves were helpful—it was easier to navigate if you knew how the sky looked—but the stories weren’t important. They were things he used to lull the kids to sleep at night, before they started telling their own stories, about the dead among them and the future they would have after the war. If there was ever a future. 

His eyes stung, and he blinked. He heard Fumiko yawn, blow out a candle, and, after a few moments, snore. It was time to go. 

He crept down the stairs towards the door, attentive to every creak his steps set off. This inn was definitely old, and while Fumiko certainly worked hard to keep it clean, it was falling apart at the seams. He could see places where termites had bitten through the roof, and every hinge and nail in this place was rusted beyond repair. Whoever this woman was, this inn hadn’t been her first priority. 

He grimaced. Of course it hadn’t been her first priority. The Fire Nation was. That’s why she was in one of their jails. 

Once he was outside, he moved quickly. There was the hint of smoke in the air, a dusty sort of ash that filled his lungs and dried out his throat. His breathing got more labored, but he pressed on.

The stars reminded him of Sneers. His labored breaths, his glazed over eyes, the way he’d screamed right before it happened. 

And then he shook the thought out of his mind. Sneers would have wanted him to keep going, so he did. 

The town was quiet at this time of night. A few lanterns were lit, but there wasn’t much light coming from them. People were in their homes, probably asleep, probably not thinking about him or the woman in the jail or anybody but themselves and their families. And that was for the best. Nobody would even remember him when he left here. One way or another, he was leaving here. 

The jail was slightly removed from the town, close enough that people from the town could come and see it, but far enough away that they didn’t have to think about it if they didn’t want to. It was just a small, shoddily made building (and it was made of metal, not wood like the jails in the Earth Kingdom) and it, like the inn, looked like it was falling apart. Nothing in this town was built well. Oh well. That would make breaking in easier. 

There was a guard at the front. If the Freedom Fighters had been with him, this would be where Sneers would distract him, while he, Longshot, and the Duke snuck in from behind. Smellerbee and Pipsqueak would hide in the trees, waiting for the right moment to jump on the guards. Then the two of them and Sneers would take on the fighting from the front while he and the others got who or what they needed. And after that, they would all run. 

But Jet was by himself this time. 

He looked down at the bone knife. What this mission needed was a little reconnaissance. Clearly, there was a guard outside the door, but were there any at the back? Inside? He knew that the Fire Nation usually depended on fear rather than raw manpower in the Earth Kingdom villages and towns they took over, but would it be the same within their own borders? 

A quick look around showed him that yes, it was. The guard didn’t even seem to be paying that much attention. Didn’t Fumiko say that this woman performed blood rituals on people? Why was there only one guard, and why did he barely look—

And then, the man rose in the air, and his back snapped straight. His eyes rolled back into his head, and his mouth fell open. His arm nearly popped out of its socket as it jerked forward, unlocking the door to the jail and opening up the cell doors of a little old lady in red Fire Nation robes. 

Jet knew his mouth was hanging open, but he couldn’t be bothered to close it. What was happening? 

He could see the guard writhing in terror, but she merely smiled and patted him on the back. “There, there, Ryu, it was only temporary,” she said. And just as quickly as his body had risen, it fell back down. 

“I wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t absolutely necessary.” She dusted off her robes and looked around her, and then directly at Jet. She narrowed her eyes. 

“What are you doing, boy?” 

Jet was rooted to the spot. Even in Ba Sing Se, the fear was accompanied by a resoluteness, a knowledge that if he had to die, at least he would know exactly what he died for. But if this woman killed him—

She rolled her eyes. “Relax, I promise I’m mostly harmless.” 

“Mostly?” Jet squeaked. 

She scowled. “I don’t usually do that,” she said, jerking her head toward the fallen guard. “I promise I don’t. But I couldn’t let them cage me up again. I just couldn’t. Do you know how it feels to be robbed of your freedom like that?” 

Jet nodded. “They took me in Ba Sing Se.” 

She scoffed. “Nothing but trouble in Ba Sing Se, that’s what I always say.” She looked at him quizzically. “What are you doing here, boy?” 

He took a deep breath. “I was coming to save you.” 

She laughed. “And why would you do that? I terrorized your village. I’ve been the talk of the town for weeks.” 

He shook his head. “No, I—” 

“No, I think I’m getting a more honest picture of who you are now,” she said quietly, moving her hands. Jet felt his throat constrict. “You wanted to see the bloodbending lady, didn’t you? You wanted to—” Her face blanched as her eyes latched onto the knife in Jet’s hand. “Where did you get that?” 

He held his hands up. “I—I didn’t—” 

“Do you think it’s wise to take things that don’t belong to you, boy?” She twisted her hand, and before Jet knew what was happening, his hand dropped the knife into her palm. “No one will take this from me, do you understand?” 

He nodded. “Please, let me go, I’m telling the truth, I wanted to rescue you—” 

“And why in Kuruk’s name should I believe you?” she growled. “You took my knife, and I didn’t see you helping in my escape.” 

He swallowed. “With all due respect, you didn’t seem like you needed help, ma’am.” 

Her eyes flashed. “Just because I didn’t need help doesn’t mean that I didn’t want it.” She looked back towards the guard. “He was kind to me. I didn’t—I wouldn’t have done that to him if there were any other options.” 

She pursed her lips into a thin line, and Jet understood. “I’m not Fire Nation,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow. “You’re certainly dressed like you are.” 

“They took my parents,” he said. “And then they took one of my best friends.” His eyes stung again, remembering Sneers, his lifeless body strung up in the rafters of their treehouse, their safe haven—”I made some choices I’m not proud of, and my friends got hurt because of it. But I promise, I’m not one of them. I swear.” 

She furrowed her brow. “You’re telling the truth.” 

She released his wrist, and he felt the familiar ache of his wrists and shoulders come back to him. His throat opened back up, and he took a deep breath. “How—How did you know that?”

She shook her head. “I’ve been studying the body my entire life. I know every beat of your heart, every recalibration of your bones.” She sniffed. “You need a healer, boy.” 

“I’m fine.” 

She laughed. “It’s always the boys who shout the loudest about how  _ fine _ they are that need the most help. Come on,” she said, cocking her head towards the road. “This is the quickest way out of town.” 

“I’m not going anywhere with you!” 

“Oh.” She closed her eyes for a moment before opening them back up again. “Yes. I suppose going anywhere with the woman who just bloodbended you probably isn’t something you want to do, is it?” 

He reached for one of his hook swords before realizing there was nothing to reach for, and then swallowed. “Is—is that what it’s called? Bloodbending?” 

She nodded. “It’s a technique I invented to get out of prison, the first time I was arrested. Based on what I was taught about healing as a girl.” She looked him up and down. “I can heal you, you know. Not totally, of course. Some pain is forever. But it’s clear to me that your shoulder hasn’t been set right, and—” 

“I’m fine,” he grumbled, but he cracked a little bit of a smile. This wasn’t like Fumiko. This lady was genuinely worried about him—him, as he was. 

The woman looked at him with kind eyes and smiled. “My name is Hama,” she said. “What’s yours?” 

“Jet.” 

He didn’t know why he gave her his real name. There was just something about her that he understood. The unwillingness to trust, or the desire to make amends, to move past everything that had ever hurt her. 

She didn’t smirk or sneer the way most people did when they heard his name. “If you would like to come with me, Jet, you can. You don’t have to, but I would love the company.” 

And maybe this was Kyoshi’s curse. Maybe this woman would stop his heart while he was sleeping, or snap his bones without a second thought. Maybe he would regret this. 

“Yeah, sure.” He looked around, towards the moon hanging low in the sky, the hint of the sun beginning to rise. “We’d better get moving.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you and lots of love to my beta @GildedFlowers I appreciate you very very much.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jet and Hama try to figure out what to make of each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for some pretty frank discussions of death and violence.

“You need new clothes,” Hama said. 

Jet had just woken up from a sleep filled with dreams of Kyoshi splitting him apart as she had split apart continents, her eyes glowing as she spoke of broken promises, rivers running red with his blood. And now, Hama wanted to talk about clothes. 

She was like that, he supposed. Blunt. Practical. He really should be grateful. She’d procured enough money for them to survive for a couple of weeks, and she’d gotten them out of the Fire Nation, and she’d been asking for days to set his shoulder properly. But everything she said was in the worst way possible. Grumbling about how he would never heal if he overextended himself, shoving food his way when her own hands were thin as thread, gazing at him with steely dark eyes until he relented to whatever she wished. Waking him up from a nightmare with her concerns about clothes. 

“My clothes are fine,” he mumbled, stoking the fire. 

“They’re dirty and they’re Fire Nation,” Hama said matter-of-factly. “They need to go.” 

Jet’s fingers curled around his sleeve. “You’re wearing Fire Nation clothes.” 

“Ah, yes, because Southern Water Tribe furs are so easy to come by in the Earth Kingdom,” she muttered, handing him a cup of hot water. “Drink.” 

He knew better than to argue with her. The water was boiling, and he felt the steam seep into his back, relaxing the muscles there. And then, out of nowhere, a memory of Li, shoving a cup of tea in his direction, his dark eyes flashing with something Jet couldn’t place as he mumbled,  _ My uncle said “enjoy.”  _

He choked on his water. Hama looked up. “Are you all right?” 

“Fine,” Jet said, an edge to his voice. “Why can’t we just both get Earth Kingdom clothes? We’d blend in better.” 

Hama didn’t look at him. “I want to go home,” she said quietly. “And I want them to recognize me. Not as a Fire Nation prisoner, and not as an Earth Kingdom refugee. As myself.” 

Jet grunted, but he didn’t argue. It sounded like something his mother would say, back when they first heard of the Fire Nation invading villages near them. He remembered her telling his father:  _ No one can take me from my home, Vijay. I’ll fight to the death if I have to.  _

And, well. She had. 

“Jet?” Hama said, snapping him out of his reverie. “Come on, I checked the map. There’s a village about a half day’s walk from here. We’d better get moving.” 

______________________________________

Hama was great at the practical side of traveling, cooking and cleaning and reading maps and figuring out what to do next, but as a traveling companion, she wasn’t much fun. Every time Jet tried to make conversation with her, her only response was a hum. Her eyes roved over the landscape, drinking it in, and she turned to smile at him sometimes, but it was rare that she said anything that wasn’t immediately relevant to their journey. Jet supposed that it was a side effect of prison, or maybe Fire Nation brainwashing, but it had crossed his mind more than once that she was deliberately keeping information from him. Like she didn’t trust him. 

Whenever this thought came up, though, he chided himself.  _ If I were her, I wouldn’t trust me either.  _

“Hey, so, that knife. Where’d you get it?”  _ Why is it so important to you?  _

She smiled at him. “Don’t trouble yourself over that.” 

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he tried again. “It’s beautiful.” 

“Thank you,” she said absentmindedly, her eyes lost in the green and gold mountain range in the distance. 

He bit the inside of his lip. He was used to people giving away their secrets at the hint of a smile, a casual nod in their direction. But Hama was impenetrable.

They got to their destination, a little village named Senlin. The forest surrounding the town had been burned to ashes, and Hama grimaced at the sight. 

“The Fire Nation destroys everything it comes across,” she muttered darkly. “They’ll destroy the whole world soon enough. Everywhere will be just like this: ashes.” 

Jet’s eyes filled. “You don’t believe that.” 

“I do.” She offered no further explanation, just set her eyes ahead. “Come. We need supplies.” 

Jet lagged behind, scanning the forest for… something. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for until he found it. 

On one of the barren tree stumps: moss. 

“Hama!” he called out, pointing to the tree. 

She rolled her eyes. “Move faster, you lazy—” She followed his finger. “What am I looking at?” 

“Moss. It’s one of the first signs of a forest coming back.” He smiled a little. “We used to use it to navigate the forest. It usually grows on the north side of trees.” 

He wasn’t used to this, this stirring in his chest, livening up the rusted pieces of his heart and getting it pumping again. But Smellerbee had loved moss. He remembered how she used to touch it like it was something magic, giggling as it sprung under her touch. 

And here, the moss had come back. 

Hama scowled. “I don’t care about some silly plant,” she said, clenching her jaw. “This forest never should have been destroyed to begin with. Loss of life still matters when new life returns.” 

He narrowed his eyes. “I know.” 

“Do you?” She was a tiny woman, but when she got in his face, he swallowed his fear. “You’re reckless and you treat yourself like you don’t matter. You’re going to run yourself into the ground, and some optimistic sap is going to see your corpse fertilizing the forest and call it hope.” 

He held her gaze, but he had nothing to say, and she knew it. 

“I suppose we have supplies to get,” he said, breaking eye contact and following her into the village.

_________________________________ 

He got new clothes. A simple evergreen tunic and black pants, all of which Hama fussed over as she had him fitted. The tailor looked suspiciously at Jet’s old clothes, and at Hama when she asked him to tear them up for scraps, but he didn’t ask questions. 

She put the scraps in her bag carefully. “We can use them as bandages,” she said, “so that next time you get a cut we can be sure it won’t be infected. They’ll be good for kindling as well.” 

They camped outside of the village, as Hama suspected she’d already drawn too much attention to herself. She dipped one of the strips of fabric in water and held it up to Jet’s face. He flinched. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she laughed. “Just trying to make sure that gash in your face doesn’t scar.” 

Jet nodded, and slowly, she dabbed at his face with the wet fabric. He could see the fabric get stained darker with dried blood, newly wet, and his face prickled with pain. “You’re hurting me,” he grumbled. 

“It would have hurt less if you let me do it sooner,” she grumbled back. “Honestly, I would bet that you’d never seen a medic in your life.” 

“I  _ have _ ,” Jet said, jutting out his chin. 

She rolled her eyes, unconvinced. “Your gang of Earth Kingdom orphans doesn’t count.” 

“Pipsqueak was a great medic,” Jet mumbled. “But I saw somebody else, once.” 

“Really?” Hama said, her tone deadpan. “Let me guess: a school child who didn’t even know how to apply a splint.” 

“No, uh. Actually, it was um. It was a Southern Water Tribe girl.” He gulped. This wasn’t exactly a pleasant memory for him, and he wasn’t even sure if Hama would believe it.

Hama shook her head at him. “There aren’t very many Southern Water Tribe girls who are accomplished healers, you know.” 

“This one was,” he said, his mind flooded with Katara’s hands on his head, making small little circles until the Dai Li’s brainwashing dissolved. “She traveled with the Avatar.” He bit his lip. “She’s probably still with him, actually.” 

Hama stopped. “You said she was a Southerner?” 

He nodded. “I, um—well, I saw some Firebenders in Ba Sing Se, and I was making some noise about it, and the Dai Li took me, and um. They brainwashed me. And then Katara—that’s the girl’s name—” 

“I’m aware of her,” Hama muttered, her dark eyes cloudy as a rainstorm. “So you’re friends with the Avatar?” 

“Oh no, not at all,” he said quickly. “They, um. I don’t think they like me much. Or at all, really. We had some bad history because I—well, I made a pretty big mistake that could have hurt a lot of people. They stopped me before it was too late—the Avatar and his friends. That’s how the Freedom Fighters—” 

“Your little orphan gang.” 

“We were revolutionaries.” 

“You were children.” The reflection of the fire danced in Hama’s eyes, but the cut of her mouth was cold as ice. But then, she softened. “I suppose children in a war aren’t really children anymore, are they?”

Jet blinked away the tears. “I tried my best,” he said. “But my best wasn’t good enough. The bitterness took over and I—I was going to flood an Earth Kingdom village that had been invaded by the Fire Nation. One of the Avatar’s friends told the village my plans and evacuated the town. After, the villagers and the Fire Nation soldiers banded together to drive us out of the forest.” 

Hama drew a stream of water from the pot on the fire and started bending it over his shoulder. He felt some of the tendons loosen and rearrange. “Sounds like they deserved to be flooded.” 

A laugh escaped Jet’s throat, but there was no humor in it. “I used to think so. It was the same people that wouldn’t give us food when we were hungry, or water when we were thirsty. Earth Kingdom families keep to themselves. There’s no place for orphans.” He pursed his lips. “They hated us more than they ever hated the Fire Nation, and I think that got under my skin. I just wanted them to see that—that they should have listened to me when they had the chance. But it was the wrong move. I see that now.” 

Hama wouldn’t meet his gaze, focusing intently on his shoulder. “So did they drive you out of the forest?” 

Jet nodded. “We fought like hell to stop them, but then—” His breath caught, his stomach turned. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” 

Hama tsked at him. “What, you don’t trust me?” 

Jet scowled. “I just don’t want to talk about it.” 

“You know, we’re stuck together, like it or not,” she said quietly. “We should get to know each other.” 

His scowl deepened. “Then why do you keep dodging my questions?”

At this, she met his gaze, and for the first time, he saw how deeply the lines were etched into her face, how brittle her long gray hair was. “Is this what you want? A secret for a secret?” 

“Yes.” Jet paused. “Tell me about the knife.” 

Her mouth hardened. “Fine. And it’s not a knife, it’s a pana. It’s used for building igluit traditionally. It was given to me by—by a girl I loved, once.” 

He raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”

“You’re insufferable,” she said, but she was smiling. “Her name was Kanna. She had fled the Northern Water Tribe to escape a forced marriage, and we became close. One day, she came up to me and handed me this pana, and she told me that she’d taken the rib of one of the chief’s seals and some of his tools to carve this and I had better like it, because we were going to use it to build a home together.” 

He smiled. “That’s beautiful.” 

“It was.” She moved her hands, and the water flowed into a waterskin she’d brought along. “But the Fire Nation raided soon after, and I was taken away. I never saw her again. They put me in a high-security prison to rot.” 

Jet looked down. “I’m so sorry.” 

She took out the pana, touching it reverently. “They took this from me,” she said quietly, and he wasn’t sure if she was talking about the pana itself, or the promise that came with it. Both, perhaps. “But I got even. I learned bloodbending, and I escaped, eventually. I ran out into the streets, thinking maybe they had destroyed the pana. But they hadn’t.” She stared at the fire, its reflection dancing in her eyes. “Everything they took from us, they put on display. The Caldera Museum of Earth Kingdom, Water Tribe, and Air Nomad Objects and Curiosities. My pana was on the first floor.” 

Jet drew his knees up to his chest. “So you stole it back?” 

She nodded. “And, except the brief period in which you found it, I haven’t been separated from it since.” She fixed her gaze on him. “All right, I’ve said my piece. What happened when the villagers drove you out of the forest?” 

Jet swallowed, but looking into Hama’s eyes, he could see a sort of stern understanding, a sense that she had been through it too. “They killed one of us.” He took a deep breath, let the tears fall. “His name was Sneers. He was six years younger than me.” The age gap would grow between them, as Sneers stayed stuck in time and Jet moved forward, however much further he had to go. “We found him in the middle of a storm, cold and abandoned. He liked telling stories about constellations. He was good at weapons but he preferred to use his fists.” The tears rolled down his face, and he made no move to swipe them away. “I thought they would come after me, but I guess they wanted to make an example. Break my spirit rather than my body.” His breath ran ragged. “After that, the group fell apart. Pipsqueak and the Duke blamed me for Sneers’s death, and Smellerbee and Longshot were pushing me to go. Give in. Start a new life. So we did. Or at least, we tried.” 

He could read her so clearly now: the horror at hearing what had happened to a little kid in her glassy eyes, the anger building up in the veins of her neck, the despair in the slight downward bent of her mouth. “You were alone when we met,” she muttered lowly. “Did they die, or did they abandon you too?” 

“Neither,” he said. “They’re in prison in Ba Sing Se. I tried to get them, but—” 

“How could you possibly think you could get them?” she asked, clenching her teeth. “You are one child, without bending or any other advantage—were you this hurt when you tried?” 

“I, um—I’ve healed up a bit since then.” 

Her eyes widened. “ _Reckless!_ Reckless and stupid!” 

“What was I supposed to do, leave them without even trying?” 

“You can’t save everyone!” She brought her hands up to her temples. “It’s admirable for you to try, to keep trying, but at some point you have to save yourself.” 

“Smellerbee and Longshot would have given their lives for me!” Jet yelled. “Spirits, they practically did give their lives for me!” 

“You and the Avatar and that  _ horrible  _ girl! You all think you’re going to be the hero. There won’t be any heroes in this war, only those who survive and those who don’t. And at this rate, you’re going to be one of the ones who doesn’t make it.” 

“So what?” The fire flickered in front of him. “Why do I have to survive? I lost  _ everything _ —my family, my friends, my home, twice—what do I have to live for now?” 

“You  _ idiot _ , that’s exactly what they want you to think.” She ran her fingers along the pana. “If you have nothing else to live for, live to prove that they can’t kill you.” 

Jet stared into the fire for a moment, before something clicked. “Wait—the Avatar? Did you meet his group too?” 

Hama glowered. “Yes. I tried to teach Katara her heritage, and she got me thrown in jail. Again. Told myself that was the last time I did a good turn for someone else, and yet—” She looked over at him, and she was impenetrable again, her eyes filled with an emotion he couldn’t name. “And yet, here I am.” 

Jet fiddled with a thread at the edge of his new clothes. “You tried teaching her bloodbending?” 

Hama nodded. 

“Figures. Katara’s too self-righteous to really embrace a thing like that.” 

“That information would have been helpful two moon cycles ago,” Hama said. “And anyway, bloodbending is a tool of survival. Just because—she shouldn’t deny herself the skill just because I—what was it you said? I let the bitterness get the better of me.” 

Jet remembered then what Fumiko had told him about Hama. “You put people in prison? Using bloodbending?” 

Hama threw some fabric strips into the fire, reviving it a little. “So you’ve heard?” 

“Yes.” 

“And does it scare you?” 

“No.” The word was on Jet’s tongue before he even knew he was going to say it. But how could he be? She fussed over his wounds and bought him new clothes and had fed him for days. And she listened, and she didn’t judge. 

She looked over at him. “You’re a rare one, then.” She clenched her fist around the pana. “I learned my lesson. Just because it was done to me doesn’t mean that doing it back to them is the right choice. But I was angry, and I—I wasn’t sure if I would ever be welcomed home.” She sighed. “They definitely won’t welcome me home now.” 

Jet shook his head. “Yes, they will,” he said firmly. “You’re a hero.” 

Her eyes flashed. “What did I tell you about that word?” 

“You’re wrong,” he said. “There will be heroes in this war. There already are. And you’re one of them.” 

She didn’t speak for a long time. Finally, she said, “You have a strange definition of that word.” 

“Maybe we do things differently in the Earth Kingdom,” he said.

She smiled wanly at him, and Jet felt something familiar bloom in his chest: the feeling of home.

_________________________ 

He dreamed that night of a girl. Her face was round and sweet, her skin warm and brown, her hair black and long and thick. Her eyes seemed to be filled with sunshine, but there was a sense of duty there, wear and tear. When she lifted her hand to greet him, he saw scars up and down her forearm, like she had been burned a thousand times all at once. When she stood, she towered over him. 

“Jet,” she said, smiling. “I’ve been waiting for you.” 

He frowned. “Who are you?” 

She took his hand in hers and squeezed it. “My name is Kyoshi.” 

__________________________

When he woke the next morning, Hama thrust a cup of something in his face. “Drink.” 

He took it without a second thought, swallowed it, and immediately went into a coughing fit. “Spirits, what  _ was  _ that? It’s the worst thing I’ve ever tasted.”

“It’s not supposed to taste good, you numbskull.” Hama was pacing now. “It’s medicine. Thousands of years of Southern Water Tribe healing tradition in a single cup. I woke up in the middle of the night to start making it.” 

Jet stared at her in awe. “But why?” 

Hama threw her hands up toward the sky. “Spirits help me.” She handed him some food, pickled salmon-frog and bannock. “I’ve been thinking about what you said last night, about heroes and all that nonsense, and everything you told me about the forest and your orphan friends, and I’ve decided.” 

He looked up at her through a mouthful of fish. “Decided what?” 

She turned to him, a glint in her eye and a smirk on her face. “We’re going to Ba Sing Se. To free your friends.” 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jet has a dream that seems more real than his actual life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mentions of imprisonment, death, and genocide.

“Kyoshi?” 

The girl smiled down at him. “It’s nice to meet you.” 

He shook his head. “But you look—” 

“Artists really like to portray me in my daofei makeup. I guess they think it’s dramatic.” She snorted. “It makes me look intimidating. And that was the point when I was the Avatar, but now everybody has this perception of me as someone who was bloodthirsty for no reason.” She smiled softly at him. “Someone who would strike down a child for invoking my name in a tough spot.” 

His eyes widened. “But—but the curse—” 

“Your mother was lovely, Jet,” she said. “Exactly the kind of person I tried to be: strong, kind, compassionate. People like her—people like you—have nothing to fear from me.” 

He frowned. “But I used your name to lie to that Dai Li agent.” 

“The one who was trying to kill you?” She shook her head. “Every Avatar makes mistakes. Some more than others. Me most of all.” A dark look passed over her face. “I founded the Dai Li, and I created the circumstances that allowed the Fire Nation to gain power. I’m just as responsible for everything that you’ve gone through as anybody else. It’s only fair that you use my name to escape the evil I created.” 

Jet’s eyes fixated on the scars on her face, on her left forearm. His mother had carried a painting of Kyoshi wherever she went, had a portrait of her hung up in the room that they all shared. He had never known about any of her scars. 

If his mother were here, she would have told him to get on his knees and beg for mercy. But right now, all he saw was a tall, awkward, gangly teenage girl, trying to make amends.

“Nice to know that one Avatar is sorry for what they did to me,” he grumbled. 

Kyoshi pursed her lips. “I expect that when Avatar Aang looks back on his life, he will mark leaving you behind as one of his mistakes.” 

“I wouldn’t count on it.” 

She barked a laugh. “This may sound strange, but I actually think that you and him have quite a bit in common. The Fire Nation took everything from both of you, too young, and now you’re tasked with saving the world. Both of you are gentle when you need to be fierce, and fierce when you should be gentle. And you both cling to the past.” Her eyes bore deep into his. “Let go, Jet. There is much ahead of you, if you would only just let go.” 

“I don’t understand.” 

“I know. But you will. You will, very soon.” She clasped his hand. “I am with you every step of the way, Jet. Only justice will bring peace.” 

And then she dissipated, and Jet was alone.

______________________

“I’m sorry,  _ what? _ ”

“Have you gone deaf in the night? We’re finding those little Earth Kingdom orphans and we’re breaking them out of prison.” 

Jet shook his head. “Hama, I  _ tried.  _ I couldn’t even find them, much less break them out. And the Dai Li nearly killed me.” 

“Yes, but this time you’ll be with me.” She smiled into the fire. “We’ll have to time it so that we’re there on the night of the full moon. I guarantee you there isn’t a bender this side of Omashu that can stand up to me during a full moon. Or any other night, for that matter, but better safe than sorry.” 

Jet shook his head. “No. The best thing we can do is stay as far away from Ba Sing Se as possible.” 

Hama scoffed. “Weren’t you the one who said that these orphans would die for you if presented with the opportunity?” 

“Weren’t you the one who said I shouldn’t try to be a hero?” 

“Yes, and I was right. Heroes are prepared to die for something not knowing if they’ll win or lose.” She smiled. “I, however, know that we are not going to lose.” 

Jet brought his knees up to his chest and winced. “Aren’t you scared?” 

She raised her eyebrows. “Of course not. But I’m glad you are.” She brought a cup of water to her lips and drank. “Fear is a sign that you want to live.” 

Hama’s plan, at least the way she described it, was fairly simple: get Jet his hook swords back. Make their way to Ba Sing Se, slip into the city undetected, and, the night of the full moon, attack. 

But to Jet, Hama’s plan sounded like lunacy. 

“How am I supposed to get my swords back? I lost them in Ba Sing Se the first time,” Jet pointed out. 

“Well, I didn’t necessarily mean  _ your  _ particular swords, but if we can find ones similar to the ones you use—” 

“There aren’t any like the ones I lost,” Jet said quietly. He sighed. “I took them from the wreckage of my village.”  _ While it was being burned around me,  _ he didn’t add. “The woman who made them, she’s um… she’s not around anymore.” 

Hama nodded. “Well. That’s unfortunate.” 

Jet nodded. He thought of Nhung, the village blacksmith, the coal that dusted her fingers and his tunics whenever he hugged her. She would point to a spot on the wall, where the swords lay, and she would say, “When you become a man, those are yours. On the house.” 

They’d been the only thing he’d had left of his village. And they were lost to the wind. 

Hama pursed her lips. “I have an idea.” She pulled out her pana and thrust it in his direction. “You know how to use it?” 

Jet’s jaw dropped. “No.” 

“Well, I can teach you—” 

“I mean  _ no _ , I can’t take that from you.” 

She rolled her eyes. “You took it from me once before.” 

“That’s because I didn’t know it was yours, or what it meant to you.” He ran a hand through his hair. “There’s got to be another way. I can steal something from someone else—” 

“Another axe you don’t know how to use?” Hama said dryly. “Look, I’m not giving it to you forever. You can use it while we break your friends out of prison, and then just as soon as everybody’s out, you will give it right back to me. Understood?” 

She offered him the pana again, and he saw how her hands trembled. He took it, slowly, giving her a chance to change her mind. But she didn’t.

“I’ll take good care of it.” 

She snorted. “You had better. Or else I’ll show you some real bloodbending.” 

______________________

The path that Hama chose to take to Ba Sing Se was winding, just in case they were followed (though Jet didn’t think that anyone would assume that a grimy kid and a stooped-over old woman were worth following). When he’d left the city the first time, he’d seen nothing, just barren wasteland that he would never know how to make a life in. But this time, he saw differently. The rolling fields of wheat and rice, the mist that settled over the hills in the morning, the flowers that always faced the sun. 

He would face the sun. When this was all over, he would try to reach for something warm and bright, even if he knew that he would always be rooted to the earth. 

The night of the new moon hit, and Hama shivered, staring into a bottomless sky that he knew he would never be able to reach. “Every Waterbender is like this,” Hama said before he could ask. “We’ve always looked towards the moon, and so when it’s gone, it’s a chance to reorient ourselves. See what else is out there.” 

He lay down next to her, putting his hands behind his head. The grass crunched below him as he settled in. “What else is out there?” 

She smiled up at the stars. “That’s the Flickering,” she said, pointing up to the sky. “My favorite constellation.” 

“What is it?” 

Hama shook her head. “That’s not for you to know,” she said. “I always pictured myself doing this with the children of the Southern Water Tribe. When I was grown up.” 

Jet looked over at her. “How old were you?” 

“Just shy of eighteen.” She looked over at him. “Just a little older than you.” 

Jet didn’t say anything back. Everything he could say was useless, and he knew it. 

The sky was vast above him, dark except for the stars, and all he could think of was how easy it would be to get swallowed up in this. The world was big, and he was small. But that was okay. People were so focused on the world, who could keep it from crumbling to dust. Their attention was on that, not on the cramped little body moving through the trees.

“We have two weeks,” Hama said. “Are you ready?” 

Jet felt the pana, resting close to his chest. “Ready as I’ll ever be.” 

The next morning, Hama navigated them towards a village that she said was close to Ba Sing Se, and with a start, Jet realized he had seen it before. Or not seen it, not quite, but it was familiar to him. The small little houses, the warm atmosphere. It was like the village he had lived in as a child. Or it would be, if the women regarded him with love and not suspicion. 

“Here,” Hama said, breaking apart some naan and handing the larger piece to him. “It’s not much.” 

“It’s enough.” He took a bite.

“We should spar,” Hama declared. “Not now, but soon. After lunch.” 

Jet frowned at her. “Are you sure? You have a bit of an unfair advantage over me.” 

She laughed. “You’re not wrong about that.” 

They did spar, but the sparring quickly devolved into Hama slumping down on the ground in frustration. “You’re too stiff,” she grumbled.

He crossed his arms. “I’m a good fighter.” 

“I know you are. Or that you think you are.” 

“Hey!” 

She paid him no mind. “A weapon of this beauty is not meant to be held so tightly,” she said, fussing with his hands. “Loosen your grip. Relax your fingers.” 

“What do you mean?” 

She rolled her eyes. “What do I mean, he asks. Tui and La, relax your fingers, boy, they’re brittle as bark. A Dai Li agent can take that hand—” she grabbed his arm “—and twist it—” she said as she pushed him so that the pana clattered to the ground, his fingers ripped from the hilt. “And then they’ll take my pana and they’ll take you, and we’ll have accomplished nothing.” 

He grimaced. “So what do you want me to do, then?” 

She regarded him for a moment. “Were any in your family benders?” 

Jet bit the inside of his lip. “My father.” 

“And I assume he taught you to be solid in the face of danger.” 

Jet shook his head. “My mother taught me how to fight.” And how to run. And how to hide. “Dad was usually working in the fields or in the quarry, so it was just me and her most of the time. But she said that I always had to stand my ground. No matter what.” 

_ And that’s another promise I’ve broken.  _

Hama squinted at him. “That’s not how we do things. Here, shift your weight.” 

He did, but she wasn’t satisfied, asking him to move around some more. “Push and pull, Jet, push and pull.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” 

She shook her head. “In Waterbending, we learn to move like the tide. The point is not to control the water, it’s to work alongside it. Same goes for the pana. You’ll never learn to use it properly if you don’t let go.” 

Jet scowled. “So you’re working alongside the water when you bloodbend?” 

Hama’s eyes grew hard. “Yes, actually. And if I ever go back to the Southern Water Tribe, I’ll be able to use that for good. An intimate knowledge of the body, the ability to control certain aspects of it for a moment or two—that can only benefit healing. And the ability to  _ loosen up _ is only going to help you fight.” 

“But—” Jet sighed. “I know how to loosen up, but it—it hurts. When I do that.” 

Hama stood behind him, rubbing her gnarled hands into his shoulders. “I told you,” she muttered. “There is some pain that’s never going to leave you.” 

“I know.” 

She stopped rubbing for a moment. “Where does it hurt?” 

“My shoulders, mainly,” he said. “My right shoulder.” 

“Okay.” She didn’t speak for a while, and when she finally said something, it was no more than a whisper. “Would you mind if I… just for…” She sighed. “Jet, I wouldn’t suggest it if there was anything else I thought I could do—” 

“Do it,” he said. “I trust you.” 

Hama smiled at him, before putting her hands on his back. 

It wasn’t painful, really. It felt like stretching, breaking the tension in his shoulders and back, loosening and realigning the muscles. His joints cracked a couple times, and the knots in his neck came undone. After, she guided him to actually stretch out his shoulder putting it in front of his chest and behind his neck. 

“How does it feel?” 

“Better,” he said. “Almost like before.” 

_ Almost.  _

She shook her head. “It’s like I said.” 

“I know.” 

Hama sighed, and squeezed his shoulder gently. “Come on, let’s go over it again.” 

______________________

They reached Ba Sing Se when the moon was near full, its light the only thing illuminating their path. The stars disappeared the closer they got to the city, and Jet could just see how everything would be lit up once they were inside the city walls. 

“How are we supposed to get inside?” Hama asked. 

“I’ve got this.” 

“Jet, if your plan is to have an elderly woman and an injured teenage boy—” 

“I’m getting better!” 

_ “—scale the tallest walls in the world—”  _

Jet grinned. “It’s not. Come with me.” 

They walked about five hundred paces before they reached their destination. Hama’s jaw dropped when she saw it. 

“What  _ is  _ this?” 

_ Don’t come back here. It’s not worth it.  _

“The Fire Nation princess tried to invade Ba Sing Se from the outside, with a drill,” he said. “The Avatar stopped her, but there’s still this hole.” 

“And they haven’t fixed it?” 

“There’s no point. She took Ba Sing Se already.” 

Hama inhaled sharply. “The Fire Nation took Ba Sing Se?” 

Jet nodded. 

“So we’re breaking your friends out of a Fire Nation prison?” 

Jet gulped. “Yeah.” 

Hama didn’t say anything. Jet had forgotten that news didn’t travel to prisoners, that he was Hama’s only point of contact with the outside world since her second imprisonment. And he’d forgotten that this might have an effect on her. 

He looked over, and saw that she was staring hard at the hole. Her jaw was set, and her eyes were flinty. “Well. Nice to know that it’s the sort of prison I have experience with. Come on, let’s go.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed! trying to finish this fic before the end of winter break but we'll see!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the end of the line, the beginning of a new life, a secret waiting to jump out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was beta'd by @thelistlesswriter!!! thank you so much List!
> 
> content warning for violence and discussions of death and gore.

They blended in so perfectly in the grimy streets of Ba Sing Se: an old, hurt woman with bitterness in her eyes, and a young boy beside her, who had had everything taken away from him. There wasn’t much difference between them and any other refugee trapped in a city with the very thing they were running from. Hama was used to hiding her bending, Jet was used to disappearing. They exchanged pleasantries with their neighbors, hung their heads in the presence of Fire Nation soldiers or Dai Li agents, and kept to themselves. 

The Lower Ring was crawling with law enforcement now. There were the Dai Li agents, who had always been there but now brimmed with new purpose, and the Fire Nation soldiers, afraid and angry and taking it out on anyone who crossed their path. Jet hoped that having Kyoshi’s protection meant that he would never come across another Dai Li agent again, but just in case, he stayed inside more often than not, sending Hama out for food. She had no history here. He had too much. 

Mostly, however, they both stayed in their cramped Lower Ring apartment, watching the moon. Sometimes, Hama hovered over him, tending to his shoulder and making him practice Waterbending stances with the pana. He felt better, almost like he had before the catacombs, but his movements were still heavier than they had been before, and no amount of training seemed to fix that. 

“When you hurt your shoulder the way that you did,” Hama said quietly, “the ligament breaks forever. It heals, but it’s never the way it was before. So you have to build up the muscle around it instead.” 

So Jet stretched and pushed and lifted and fought and watched the moon, watched Hama crack her knuckles and say  _ It’s not time, it’s not time.  _

Until it was. 

“The full moon,” she said, watching the sun disappear behind the fallen walls of Ba Sing Se. “We strike tonight.”

He remembered the way, still. He kept replaying that night, Chen at the blacksmith’s and the Dai Li agent.  _ On my honor and Kyoshi’s.  _ The hallway disappearing into stone behind him, the faces of all the kids he wouldn’t be saving tonight. 

But then, when the memory became too much, he saw Hama behind him, and exhaled. This wasn’t that night. 

“We have a long way to walk,” he said. “The children are held underneath the Upper Ring.” 

Hama scoffed. “I can walk.” 

“I’m just letting you know.” 

Her eyes roamed the dank green caverns. “Do you think they know?” 

“Who?” 

“The people in the Upper Ring. Do you think they know they’ve got children crying for their mothers underneath their noses?” 

Jet nodded. “They have to. Just like they have to know that if they ever said anything about it, they would be cast out.” 

“And do you think they should prioritize themselves over the lives of the children they live above?” 

“I wouldn’t.” 

“But should they?” 

Jet’s stomach twisted. He thought of Smellerbee and Longshot, who, in the best-case scenario, were trapped somewhere in this underground maze, and there were people who maybe could have gotten them out, gotten them food and water and shelter, and they chose themselves instead. 

But it was more complicated than that. It had to be more complicated than that. 

Because he knew that he couldn’t save every person here. He wasn’t even looking at the adults, somewhere below the Middle Ring, and he knew that he would walk by every child that looked at him with hungry, sunken eyes, until he found Smellerbee and Longshot. He knew that he would give them hope, only to take it away. 

“I don’t know.” 

Hama made a small, noncommittal noise and continued on in silence. The green crystal of this part of the catacombs nagged at him, and he kept getting flashes of that night: agreeing to help Katara and the Avatar, staying behind, the rock, Smellerbee and Longshot—

He gripped the wall, choking on air. 

Hama rushed over to him. “Are you all right?” 

He wanted to nod, say that they needed to keep going, but now his memory had its hands around his neck, and it wasn’t letting him go. 

The green crystal. 

Smellerbee and Longshot were watching him die, and he wasn’t dying. He didn’t know why. Ever since his village had been burned, he knew he was living on borrowed time, and now, that time was up. 

He was doing a good thing. The right thing. 

Footsteps sounded behind them, approaching the door to this room. “Leave,” he croaked. “Save yourself.” 

Hama shook him. “Jet, we have to go.” 

Smellerbee and Longshot hauled him up. “We’re going to get you out of here, Jet,” Bee whispered. 

_ “Leave!” _ His voice was hoarse, and he could feel the last of his energy seeping out of him. “You’re better off.” 

Smellerbee and Longshot exchanged a glance, before carrying him up, out of that place. 

Hama took him by the shoulders. “Never,” she said. “I’m never leaving you behind.” 

_____________________

He wavered in and out of consciousness as Smellerbee and Longshot carried him out of the catacombs, onto the street. Rain poured down on them, collecting between the cobblestones and filling his shoes with water. Smellerbee’s hair crunched up and frizzed, and Longshot recoiled when the first bolt of lightning struck. 

“I know Pipsqueak said we’re not supposed to carry people like this when they’ve been badly hurt,” he heard Smellerbee say at one point. “Maybe he would have a better plan if he hadn’t left us.” 

It was a long way back to the apartment, and Smellerbee talked to him the whole time. “You’re gonna live, Jet,” she said. “We’re gonna get out of this city, go someplace nobody can get us. A farm. Yeah. We’re gonna get a farm. And Longshot’s gonna shoot snakerabbits for us to eat with our rice and cabbage, and you’re gonna get us an ostrich horse, and we’re finally gonna be free, Jet. Nobody’s going to bother us anymore.” 

Even now, dangerously close to sleep, to whatever came after that, he wanted to tell her to stop spouting nonsense. Nonsense wasn’t going to make him feel any better. 

They got to the apartment, and Smellerbee laid him down on the bed. “Longshot, where are the bandages?” 

Longshot handed her a thick wad of gauze and some fabric, and they got to work, cleaning Jet’s wounds and carefully wrapping the bandages around them. Smellerbee fashioned him a sling and tied it around his shoulder, all the while talking to him, about her dreams and her hopes and her wishes. 

And there was a part of him that wanted her to stop, but he stayed silent. They’d never talked like this before. The others, he’d let them ramble about stupid dreams, mothers and fathers, friends and lovers, life after war. But between him and Smellerbee, it was always business. Where was their next raid, where was their next meal, how would they survive till the end of the week. These were things she needed to know, for when his borrowed time ran out and she took over the Freedom Fighters, and she was good at handling survival, shouldering the responsibility. She cared for the younger ones and never burdened anybody, not even him, and she seemed to be okay. He’d never known her to want for anything beyond the Freedom Fighters. 

Or maybe, he’d convinced himself that she didn’t. 

There was a knock at the door, and Smellerbee blanched. “Get down!” she whispered to Longshot. 

They both crouched to the floor, and against his will, Jet groaned. 

Another rap at the door, followed by, “Open up! The Earth King commands it!” 

Smellerbee looked toward Longshot, panic written all over her face. “We have to go.”

Longshot shook his head and pointed toward Jet. Smellerbee looked to him and shook her head. “We’ll never make it far enough away if we’re carrying him.” 

Longshot shook his head and started picking Jet up, but then, the knocking grew louder. “We can’t do it,” Smellerbee said. “You saw what they did to him. They’ll do it to us too.” 

Longshot pursed his lips. 

“I know. I know we said we would never leave him.” Smellerbee looked toward Jet then and smoothed the hair back from his forehead. “He told me—he said leaders have to make difficult choices.” She swallowed. “I choose the Freedom Fighters.” 

Jet tried to reach for her, but he barely had the strength to breathe. His fingers lifted, spiraling toward her hand, but they never made it. 

“What about you?” Smellerbee said. 

The Dai Li knocked again. “We’re knocking down the door!” 

Longshot nodded, grabbing his bow and handing Smellerbee her knife. 

“Goodbye, Jet.” Smellerbee kissed his forehead. “We’ll come back for you soon, okay?” Longshot kissed his forehead as well. “Promise. We love you. We’re coming back for you.” 

They opened the window behind him, to the cloudy sky and the lightning, and in a flash, they were gone. 

The Dai Li agents forced their way in, and he shut his eyes. “What’s this?” an agent muttered over his body. 

The other scoffed. “Another dead kid in Ba Sing Se. Imagine that.” 

“What do we do with the body?” 

A slight pause, and then the other said, “Leave it to rot.” 

_______________________

Hama shook his shoulders. “Jet, Jet, wake up, wake up, come on.” 

“They’re not here,” he breathed. 

Hama stopped. “Who?” 

“Sm… Smeller… Smellerbee and Longshot.” His face glistened with a fine sheen of cold sweat. He held onto the stones underneath his hands. “They’re not here.” 

Hama blinked. “But… but you said…” 

He nodded. “I thought… the last thing I remembered… was the catacombs. All of us. And I thought…” His eyes filled. “I thought they wouldn’t leave me. Not if they could help it.” 

Hama looked from left to right, before hauling Jet back up on his feet. “What do you remember now?” 

He started talking, and felt the tears about to spill over, the rasp in his throat of an aborted sob. “And I don’t know where they went, and I can’t—” 

“We’ll find them,” Hama said. “Or they’ll find you, like they promised they would.” 

Jet stared at her. “Haven’t you been listening? They—” 

“Didn’t abandon you.” Hama’s dark brown eyes bore into his. “They would never abandon you. They said they would come back.” 

“And then they left me there to die!”

“You raised them to be logical,” Hama said evenly. “To calculate the best odds. Smellerbee knew that the agents would think you were dead, and she figured they would leave you where you were. And she and Longshot planned to come back.” 

“They never did,” Jet rasped. “They—they said they loved me.” 

“And they do.” 

“But they—” 

“Love isn’t always throwing yourself on your enemy’s sword. It’s  _ survival.  _ It’s doing everything you can to ensure that the people you care about  _ live.”  _ Hama narrowed her eyes. “Smellerbee didn’t just have herself to think about. She had Longshot. And she had no way of knowing whether you were a lost cause or not.”

“I wasn’t.” But the words tasted sour in his mouth. Hadn’t he thought so, then? Didn’t he always tell Smellerbee that he was living on borrowed time?

“No, you weren’t. But the way you’ve struggled to come back to them—don’t you think, somewhere out there, they’re struggling to come back to you?” 

Jet bit the inside of his lip. “That doesn’t change the fact that we’re  _ stuck _ down here, for nothing.” 

Hama’s eyes glinted. “No. We’re here to save them.” 

She gestured toward the long line of cages behind them, the children holding onto the bars, their eyes dead and lonely.

“All of them?” 

“I don’t see why not,” 

“But—” 

“Jet. I have broken out of one prison and one jail. I have experience with this. And you have escaped the Dai Li twice. If anyone can do this, it’s us.”

_ Let go, Jet. There is much ahead of you, if only you would just let go.  _

And then, for the first time that night, she smiled at him, and to his surprise, he nodded. 

He ran towards the cells and started using the pana to pick the locks. The first lock snapped, and he opened the door. “Go!” he yelled at the kids. “You’re free now.” 

They shrunk back into their cell. “What do you mean?” one of them asked. 

“It’s a trick,” another said. “He’s Dai Li in disguise.” 

“No, I’m—” He stopped. “Look, you can trust me, okay? I’ll help you out. I promise.” 

He smiled, and one by one, the kids started coming forward, grabbing each other’s hands for comfort. “Thank you,” he said. “Now come on, we’ve got some other kids to save.” 

“Jet, we’ve got company!” Hama yelled. 

The patter of footsteps, and then, a phalanx of men in long dark robes. “Halt, in the name of the Fire Princess!” 

“Absolutely not,” Jet muttered, drawing the pana, but Hama pushed his hands down. 

“Focus on the kids,” she said quietly. “They need you. And besides,” she said, “I can handle this.” 

And with that, Hama raised her arms, and the bones of a dozen Dai Li agents cracked and crumpled to the ground. 

Jet stared at her in awe. “I’m so glad you’re here.” 

“You had better be. Start picking more locks.” 

He did as he was told, leading the kids to the next cell and fitting the pana into the grooves of the lock. It was slow going, and eventually one of the kids pushed him aside and said, “I’ll do it.” She pulled out a tiny hairpin and picked the lock in a few beats. Jet’s face broke into a wide grin. 

“What’s your name?”

The kid smiled slightly. “Nhung.” 

For a moment, Jet stood still, thinking of the woman he’d known and reconciling her with the girl in front of him. Then, he crouched down. “You know, Nhung, I think we make a pretty good team, huh? Why don’t you go pick another lock, and I’ll take care of the kids? Does that sound good?” 

She nodded, and Jet stood, rubbing her head. Then, he looked toward the other kids in the cell. “Come on, everyone. We’re fighting for our freedom.” 

Just then, Jet heard the sound of several bodies slamming into the wall. “They’re bringing reinforcements!” 

“Any of you know how to fight?” 

A gangly boy with dark skin piped up, “I can.” 

“All right, kid, you go help Hama fight off those agents.” 

“But last time, they wiped my memory.” 

Jet softened. “Yeah. They wiped mine too, the first time I fought them. But then, a Southern Water Tribe healer saved me.” He jerked his head toward Hama. “She’s a Southern Water Tribe healer. I promise, if anything happens to you, she’ll heal you. Nobody gets left behind, yeah?” 

The boy nodded grimly and went to stand by Hama’s side, and then clocking a Dai Li agent in the jaw. Jet grinned again. 

Nhung ran back to Jet’s side. “The doors are all open, but the kids won’t come out.” 

More Dai Li agents materialized on either side of the hallway, staring Jet down. “This ends now.” 

“Not if I can help it.” Jet drew the pana and leveled it at the Dai Li agents. “Kids, go help the others! Let them know that you trust us, got it?” 

“Yes, sir!” 

Nhung led some of the other kids to the cell doors, but a few stayed behind. “I want to fight them,” one kid muttered. 

“Me too,” the girl next to him said.

Behind them, Hama’s neck dripped with sweat as she raised a few Dai Li agents off the ground and let them drop at her feet. 

“Then let’s do it,” Jet said, turning towards the other group of agents at the end of the hall. He gripped the pana loosely, like Hama had taught him, and ran forward, sticking it in an agent’s chest. Beside him, the girl elbowed another agent in the groin, and the boy punched another agent in the face. 

Jet pulled the pana out of his agent’s chest, and the one behind him rolled his eyes. “Let’s end this.” 

He punched the air, and a large rock came sailing toward Jet’s chest. Jet ducked, and yelled behind him, “Incoming!” 

Hama sidestepped, and the kids followed her example, until the rock hit one of the agents squarely in the chest, sending him flying. 

While everyone was distracted, Jet stabbed the agent in the neck. “Yeah, let’s end this.” The pana was soaked in blood now,  _ With love  _ written in red. He’d clean it before he gave it back to her. 

Hama ran towards him. “Are they gone?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Good. I think it’s time to make our exit.” 

They emerged on the same Upper Ring street Jet remembered from last time. The fountain glorifying the first Earth King had been replaced with a statue of Firelord Ozai, and Jet couldn’t resist. 

He ran over to the statue, spat at it, and grinned. “We’re going to win.” 

“Jet?” 

He whipped around to see Smellerbee and Longshot, staring at him like they’d just seen a ghost. Smellerbee had grown a few inches taller since he’d last seen her, and Longshot had filled out a little bit, but otherwise, they looked exactly the same. 

“We—we heard there was a prison break, we _ —Jet!”  _ Smellerbee ran forward and wrapped him up in a fierce hug, and Longshot followed. “I thought I’d never see you again,” she whispered.

Jet smiled. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.” 

“So,” a voice said behind them. “This is the famous Smellerbee and Longshot, huh?” 

“Get in here, Hama,” Jet said, waving her in. “You’re family.” 

“We trust anybody Jet trusts,” Smellerbee added. “He has good instincts. For the most part.” 

Hama hesitated, but then, finally, she lightly patted Jet on the back. “Family.” 

______________________

Smellerbee got her farm. 

They returned some of the kids to their families, but most of them didn’t have families, and Jet wasn’t about to leave them on the streets of the Fire Nation’s Ba Sing Se to get snatched up again. So, one day, he, Smellerbee, and Longshot went out and stole some gold from a Fire Nation admiral, for old times’ sake. Thankfully, the man they bought the farm from was too desperate to escape back to the Fire Nation to question where they got their money. 

By the next new moon, the war was over. Ba Sing Se fell to the White Lotus, and the kids told tall tales about how the Avatar defeated Firelord Ozai (“There’s no such thing as a Lion Turtle,” Jet laughed.) Smellerbee, Longshot, Jet, and Hama spent their days tending to the rice and cabbage and lying out in the sun, enjoying the feeling of being able to slow down and relax for once. 

And Hama stayed. At first, Jet was overjoyed to hear her say that she would stay with them for a few more moon cycles, just to help them get settled, but then, those moon cycles passed, and then a few more after that. 

“I thought you wanted to go back to the Southern Water Tribe?” 

A dark look passed over her face. “I’ll go back.”

“When? The war is over, we have the means to get you a ship—” 

“I didn’t know you were so sick of me.” 

“Of  _ course  _ I’m not sick of you, but… don’t you miss Kanna?” 

“That’s none of your concern.” She stood. “I think the ostrich horse needs to be taken out.” 

“Hama.” 

She wouldn’t look at him, just turned around and left. 

At that moment, Smellerbee walked in. “Hey, Jet.” She frowned at him. “You doing okay?” 

“I’m fine,” he replied, scowling. “What is it?” 

She sighed and handed him a scroll. “This came for you. It’s from Pipsqueak.” 

“Pipsqueak?” Jet raised his eyebrows. “Why would Pipsqueak write me?” 

Smellerbee shrugged. “I didn’t read it yet, but, um… the seal’s Fire Nation.” 

Jet rolled it around, and, sure enough, the emblem on the seal was the same as what had been on soldiers’ coats when the Freedom Fighters did their raids. He broke it and read what was inside. 

“Jet,” he began. “I hope this letter reaches you. Sokka—wait, he’s with  _ Sokka? _ How?” 

“Stranger things have happened. Keep going.” 

Jet sighed. “Sokka assured me that Fire Nation messenger hawks always find their intended target. I want to apologize for what happened between us and for leaving the Freedom Fighters. The Duke is sorry too. We were foolish to blame you for Sneers’s death.” 

“Damn right they were,” Smellerbee grumbled. “What else does it say?” 

“Well, I’m getting there.” He continued, “The Duke and I aided in the war effort, fighting by the Avatar’s side. As a reward, we were invited to the new Firelord coronation—what, they’re just crowning a new Firelord like nothing is  _ wrong? What?”  _

“War never changes.” 

“We’ll be lucky if we ever see peace.” Jet’s scowl deepened. “The Duke and I heard about you breaking those kids out of the catacombs. Zuko says that your work helped destabilize the Dai Li, allowing him and Katara to take back Caldera City.” He scoffed. “Fuck do I care about Caldera City?” 

“Apparently Pipsqueak cares about it now,” Smellerbee muttered darkly. 

Jet sighed. “As a gesture of thanks, he wants to invite you to his coronation—okay, so  _ Zuko’s _ the new Firelord, that’s who our new enemy is—and give you his thanks in person. I know you probably don’t want to attend a Fire Nation coronation, but I hope you will consider it, because the Duke and I would really like to see you again and apologize to you in person. Regards, Pipsqueak.” Jet threw the letter aside in disgust. “He can’t be serious.”

“It’s a trap,” Smellerbee said, crossing her arms. “There’s no way  _ Pipsqueak  _ and  _ the Duke _ got invited to a Fire Nation coronation.” 

“Unless, they’re spies, and they’re luring us to the Fire Nation so we can be killed.” 

“Exactly! Oh, hey Longshot.” 

Longshot smiled by way of greeting as he entered the room. He pointed to the letter, and Jet rolled his eyes. “Yeah, apparently, Pipsqueak and the Duke want to  _ apologize  _ and invite us to a Fire Nation coronation.” 

“But obviously, we’re not going,” Smellerbee added. 

Longshot frowned, reading the letter. And then he looked at Jet, and Jet sighed.   
“You want to go, don’t you?” 

Longshot nodded. 

“But aren’t you scared?” 

Longshot shook his head and tapped his bow approvingly. 

Jet pursed his lips. “And you’re not angry?” 

Longshot shook his head again. He grabbed a brush from the table beside Jet and wrote in the margins of the letter.  _ I miss them.  _

“They don’t deserve us missing them,” Smellerbee mumbled, her voice wobbling a bit. “They left us.” 

Jet nodded, but something pulled at him.  _ Let go, Jet.  _

“We’ll take all our weapons,” Jet said. “And some more, just in case this turns out to be a trap.” 

Longshot grinned. Smellerbee scowled. 

“I don’t want to.” 

Jet shook his head. “Bee, the Freedom Fighters are a family.” 

“Yeah, well, Pipsqueak and the Duke are our estranged cousins now.” 

“That’s not how this works.” Jet put a hand on her shoulder. “Look, I’m not saying that we’re going to forgive them. But we can give them a chance to explain themselves. Right?”

Smellerbee pressed her lips into a thin line. “Fine. I’ll go. Just to make sure you two don’t get yourselves killed.” 

Jet grinned. “Thanks, Bee.” 

“Yeah, don’t mention it.” 

_____________________________

The three of them told everyone about their plans that night over dinner. Hama stabbed at a piece of lettuce with her chopsticks. “I’m going with you.” 

Jet blanched. “Well, we need someone to watch the kids—” 

“Nhung can do that,” Hama said coldly. “I’m going with you.” 

Smellerbee smiled wanly. “Well, I guess that settles it.” 

Within a few days, they had packed, said their goodbyes to the kids, left Nhung with the necessary instructions. Hama peered at the road ahead of them, the corners of her mouth turned down. 

“So,” she said. “To the Fire Nation then?” 

Jet’s stomach dropped. “Yeah, to the Fire Nation, I guess.” 

“Couldn’t be more excited,” Smellerbee mumbled sarcastically under her breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading!!!! you can find more of me crying about Jet and Hama and the Freedom Fighters @army-of-mai-lovers on tumblr.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! you can find me @harutheestallion on tumblr. please check out [ Black and Pink](https://www.blackandpink.org/), a organization comprising of LGBTQ+ prisoners and free-world allies seeking to end the prison-industrial complex and to abolish prisons and police. 
> 
> fic title from "Not Ready to Make Nice" by the Chicks


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